Rakuten Kirei ºC Navi receives Good Design Award from Japan Institute of Design Promotion

Rakuten, Inc. and Toshiba Corporation (TOKYO:6502) announced today that their jointly developed service for women, "Rakuten Kirei ºC Navi," which provides advice and information on a variety of aspects of beauty based on basal body temperature, received a Good Design Award 2013 from the Japan Institute of Design Promotion (JDP).

The Good Design Award has served as Japan's design evaluation and commendation system since 1957, when it was launched by the government of Japan to identify and recognize products with particularly good designs. The Good Design Award covers myriad fields of design and since its inception, about 1,000 awards have been handed out every year over the past 55 years and a grand total of some 38,000 products have received recognition.

Rakuten Kirei ºC Navi enables female consumers to upload to their mobile devices their basal body temperature data measured by a specially designed thermometer developed by Toshiba. They are then able to track and manage their temperature using an exclusively developed app. Female consumers establish a daily habit of dedicating less than one minute to taking their temperature (about 40 seconds), and uploading the data to their mobile device (two to three seconds). The app provide beauty advice to the user that best matches their body temperature results, broken down by the themes of beauty, diet, and fine dining. This is in addition to helping users manage their daily basal temperature readings, as well as predict their next period and date of ovulation. The service can be used on both Android devices and iOS devices, and costs 170 yen per month or 2,000 yen (consumption tax included) for a one-year subscription. The thermometer features Toshiba's long-standing communication technology for sending precise data, and ultra low power consumption technology, which means that the battery will not have to be changed for a long time, even if used daily.

Rakuten Kirei ºC Navi won a Good Design Award in the Service and System for Individuals category. The service was recognized for its simple and easy operating system designed with proprietary communications technologies, for its low monthly subscription cost, and for its basal temperature monitoring system's completeness and compatibility with smartphones. In conjunction with this award, Rakuten Kirei ºC Navi will be on display at the Good Design Exhibition 2013 held at Tokyo Midtown between October 30 and November 4, 2013.

Going forward, Rakuten and Toshiba will reflect user feedback into the service and design to ensure that female consumers are more easily able to monitor and be aware of changes taking place in their bodies.